Carl Gillett

Northern Illinois University

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Kenneth Aizawa

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Barry Loewer

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Bradley Rives

Indiana University of Pennsylvania

D. Gene Witmer

University of Florida

Colin McGinn

University of Miami

Daniel K. Brannan

Abilene Christian University

Sydney Shoemaker

University of Missouri

Noa Latham

University of Calgary

Jaegwon Kim

John Wiley & Sons (United States)

Brian P. McLaughlin

John Wiley & Sons (United States)

Cooperative Institutions

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Rutgers Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

University of Oxford

John Wiley & Sons (United States)

Birkbeck, University of London

Cornell University

University of Cambridge

University College London

Corpus Christi College

Engineering Arts (United States)

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Strong emergence as a defense of non-reductive physicalism: A physicalist metaphysics for 'downward' determination

Principia Caminhos da Iniciação Científica (2002)

Carl Gillett

Physicalism

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Citations (17)

Using Compositional Explanations to Understand Compositional Levels: An Integrative Account

The MIT Press eBooks (2021)

Carl Gillett

Compositional data

10.7551/mitpress/12389.003.0016

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Citations (2)

The Age of Reduction versus the Age of Emergence

Cambridge University Press eBooks (2016)

Carl Gillett

A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

Content (measure theory)

10.1017/cbo9781139871716.012

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WHY CONSTITUTIVE MECHANISTIC EXPLANATION CANNOT BE CAUSAL

American Philosophical Quarterly (2020)

Carl Gillett

Abstract In his “New Consensus” on explanation, Wesley Salmon (1989) famously argued that there are two kinds of scientific explanation: global, derivational, and unifying explanations, and then local, ontic explanations backed by causal relations. Following Salmon’s New Consensus, the dominant view in philosophy of science is what I term “neo-Causalism” which assumes that all ontic explanations of singular fact/event are causal explanations backed by causal relations, and that scientists only search for causal patterns or relations and only offer causal explanations of singular facts/events. I argue that there are foundational, and fatal, flaws in the neo-Causal picture. The relations backing constitutive mechanistic explanations of activities of wholes using activities of parts, as well as other species of compositional explanation, cannot be causal relations. Treating them as causal or causation-like is therefore plausibly a category mistake. Compositional explanations in the sciences represent instead a sui generis kind of ontic explanation of singular fact/event backed by sui generis compositional relations. We thus need a pluralistic revision of Salmon’s New Consensus on explanation to reflect these findings.

Ontic

Causation

Mistake

Causal structure

10.2307/48570644

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Glossary

Carl Gillett

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Glossary

10.1017/cbo9781139871716.013

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References

Cambridge University Press eBooks (2001)

Carl Gillett Barry Loewer

A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

10.1017/cbo9780511570797.019

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Complexity and the Metaphysics of Emergence

PsycEXTRA Dataset (1999)

Carl Gillett

10.1037/e628852011-001

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Realization, Reduction, and Emergence: How Things Like Minds Relate to Things Like Brains

Springer eBooks (2014)

Kenneth Aizawa Carl Gillett